Hunter

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:11:40 GMT

Halloween pictures!

It was definitely the best year yet. Hunter was quite into getting dressed up, going to people's houses and saying "Trick or Treat". He even did a couple houses all on his own. We were out for probably an hour this year which is a huge step up from 10 minutes for the last few years. Dan and Jenn came out in great costumes (I'll have to get one together for next year) and helped out and added to the fun. The bonfire was still too scary but at least it wasn't raining this time.

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:17:28 GMT

Just some pictures of his schoolwork. I think it's funny because it's really no different than the workbooks we have at home. :-) Apparently we're supposed to start stifling his creativity by enforcing 'within-the-lines' colouring. Boo!

Apparently W.I.T.S is a conflict resolution system they've been working at at school.

Today was Mrs. Geddes last day. His new teacher, Mrs. Stubbs has come in and she seems nice and Hunter likes her. We had a fairly amusing conversation about it all this morning and in the car. Hunter decided that Mrs. Geddes baby might be his new teacher, then started asking all the questions about where the baby was, how it comes out, etcetc. Ahhh, innocence of youth. The stork in the cabbage patch answer didn't seem to suffice. Then again, the real answer wasn't as interesting as an interrogation over where Jason had parked.

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:08:51 GMT

Hunter had a great time looking at the planes. Didn't want to come down and see Nana, just wanted to see the planes!

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:03:21 GMT

I can't believe I haven't updated this in a month. I continually think about it but there's just never enough time to upload the pictures and do the writing these days.

Hunter is doing fabulously at Kindergarten and absolutely loving it. It continually surprises me just how popular he is, after so many worries about him being the youngest, smallest, etc. Whenever we arrive at the playground there's choruses of "Hunter! Hunter!" and many from older kids not even in his class. It's wonderful.

Also 100% toilet trained and has been for 3-4 weeks now. :-D :-D :-D WTG Hunter!!!!

The not so wonderful is that Hunter has slipped into the third percentile for his height and/or weight (not quite sure which), which means that 97% of children are bigger than he is, which is a concern. So the Doctor sent him for Thyroid testing and we're checking in in two months about his height. Whether this will eventually lead to growth hormones or something bigger, remains to be seen.
At the Doctor's office:

And at the hospital for his blood test:

He was such a trooper about it all, didn't even cry. Still awaiting results.

After much mind-changing (Superhero Guy again, Bumblebee, Batman, Flash..) we finally got Hunter's Halloween costume, IRON MAN!

And there will be more pictures soon, as I got sent home some of his school work and Nana is back today after being in Crete since Sept 30th and we're off to the airport in a few hours to pick her up with Lolo and Bruce. :-D

It was quite a day when these were taken and I was quite touched but his empathy on that day. I was having an awful morning really -- stuck out of the house without enough time to return, lost wallet, exhausted, too hot -- that sort of rotten day. I finally organized myself and sat down at a Dairy Queen with Hunter and he gives me this look and says "Tell me about your bad day." It was quite touching. :-)

We held an early birthday for me at the end of September, since my mother was off to Crete on my actual birthday. Dan and Jenn came over and it was a blast. Hunter did some tshirt painting and had a ton of fun.

Sorry about the collage-a-thon but after so long I didn't want to post 80 pictures.

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:07:05 GMT

We survived our first Wednesday without problem, yaaaaaaaaay!!!

So proud of little man. At school from 8:45 to 2 pm. Only halfway through the second week of school and already seeing progress. He's counting with more confidence, recognizing more letters, tackled a certain type of ladder that he couldn't get before and is becoming more physically confident and taking more physical risks than before. All great progress and good to see. Quite funny the things he says after school, usually a proud declaration of "I followed all the rules again!!!" and then followed up with something about someone talking too much. Today it was "someone was not behaving and didn't get the treat."

So without further adieu...Hunter singing Bob Marley this morning...

He's still being a sneaky bug and stealing my camera a lot. I found this on it this morning...

Already taking Myspace-esque shots lol.

And from our walking to bus stop this morning

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:23:38 GMT

TGIF!!!!!!!!

Seriously, thank God. Three days of school and three evenings of migraines for it so far. Hunter is enjoying it which is great but it certainly is stressful. Much of it just because it's the first week and everything is still getting sorted out with the school itself and has yet to fall into a routine.

For the first couple days we dropped him off right at the classroom, but of course the school doesn't want hundreds of adults in and out of the school so that's now changed to dropping him off at one of the side doors and the class lines up and is brought in by the teacher. Then they're lined up on the opposite side of the school to be let out. Chaotic since we haven't had a chance to get to know anyone in his class and many classes are lined up in the same areas so you're essentially wandering around asking random parents if their kid is in the same class and then sticking with them. Doesn't help that the teacher seems, understandably, frazzled and forgot where to meet her class this morning, then lost track of Hunter at the end of the day.

And much just the difficulties that I knew Hunter would face being smaller and younger than most of the other kids. So he moves slower (which is how he got separated at the end of the day), can't quite use the drinking fountain (so now we have to send along bottled water) and apparently got stuck on the playground (at which point he told me that the teacher yelled at him or somesuch because the class was waiting for him). I've always looked at it as a bit of a catch-22. It's going to be hard and I knew it would be hard but it has to be hard because that's the only way he'll learn to overcome these obstacles. He probably would be more on par had I held him back a year and it would be less stressful for us, but at the same time that's another year lost of learning, another year of him becoming set in his ways and another year of him being in and out of daycare with younger children.

Anyway, he says that he's having a good time. He sang two songs, one about a dog and one about bodies, yesterday. And played with some toys and seems to have a new friend named Oliver, who never stops talking (what a pair). Today we got more elaboration that the dog's name is Wag (we thought it might be Bingo) and he found his name on the circle carpet and drew a backpack today.

Prepping school supplies

Me and H

And since his backpack strap broke on Tues morning, we bought him a new one and some new shoes. All geared up for school!

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:24:29 GMT

It was meet-the-teacher day today :-)

We had our first look at the new school. Hunter was suitably impressed with their toy selection, which was far more than I thought Kindergartens had. Met his teacher, Mrs. Geddes, who was very nice. He goes in from 10:40 to 12:00 tomorrow and then the first real day (1-3 pm) on Thurs. He insisted he wanted to stay at school which is a good sign. :-)

Other then that, PRAISE AND HALLEJULAAAAAAAAAAA, we've finally gotten to the point where he's not having "accidents" in his underwear anymore. Gods, I feel like this was almost worse than the walking, waiting for this to happen. He's been fine using the bathroom to pee since he was like 2, 2.5 but this BM thing just would not happen. Or it would happen a couple times then he would just stubbornly decide not to and for a year now he's pretty much just gone in his undies and declared it an accident (every time) and it's just like arggggggghhhhh. As soon as I stopped bribing him, he stopped having BMs on the toilet. Stinker. So I'm incredibly happy and it could not have come at a better time with school starting. He's gone from needing 2-4 pairs of undies to only 1, so yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And driving his car

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 07:50:45 GMT

Lolo, Hunter and I did our annual trip to Fort Rodd Hill! yesterday. It was the best year by leaps and bounds. Hunter is truly starting to appreciate trips, enjoying the excitement of knowing our plan and then being able to linger and enjoy things a little more than simply walking through. The weather was beautiful and we explored some neat new areas and the new exhibits that are up.

I've tried to avoid 'repeat pix' since this is our third or fourth year doing this.

One slightly irritating thing is that everything is suddenly too loud. Says the child who turns up everything normally. I don't know if I'm just going deaf, it's a sign of an ear-infection or he just has some sort of super-hearing but he decided the tour buttons were too loud.

After passing through the grey concrete walls and massive steel gates of Upper Battery, visitors arrive at the Guardhouse. Built in 1895, the interior has been restored to what a typical British guardhouse of the time might have looked like. Interior exhibits show lifestyles, period uniform and weapons. An audio station sets the tone and evokes memories of the British Empire at its height.

I swear these are new but I'm not sure. No idea what they do either.

From one of the guard-houses

The "Disappearing Gun" system was developed in the late 1800's as the last word in coastal defense against enemy ships. Briefly the gun was protected behind a concrete emplacement sunk into the ground When a target had been spotted and all the necessary calculations made, the gun barrel would rise up, fire, and immediately sink back down to safety. It would have been almost impossible for a ship to drop a shell at a high enough angle to hit the gun position.

The 6-inch caliber gun here in Upper Battery was one of three in total at Fort Rodd Hill. It could fire a 100 lb. shell almost 7 miles. The gun barrel on display is the original one to this position, first test fired in October of l 897. The barrel alone weighs 5 tons. It was a very accurate weapons system, but the "Disappearing" feature meant that the rate of fire was slowed. A well-trained gun team of 12 men might manage to fire one shot every two minutes.

And heading down towards the Lower Battery...

You know you're good when you're gun is bigger than you are (I think)

This was a neat courtyard that we hadn't seen before, behind the Officers Quarters

They'd redone the inside but it was mostly a lot of intricate charts, interesting to read but not quite postable.

View outside the Officers Quarters, looking at the Lower Battery

Casemate Barracks
Here was the soldier's home—his cot, barrack box for personal effects, a place to hang his equipment, his open-air mess tent (in the summer), the kitchen where the food was cooked, a place to wash and shave (the Ablution room) as well as the fort's main food supply. Other necessary areas, including the latrines, the coal and oil stores and the fort's larder were nearby.

The three large barracks rooms held up to 18 men each. A new display is open in room number 1, which has been restored to the way it looked in the 1930s. You can also listen to the audio program, where you will hear music of a bygone era, and the voices of some of the men who were here in the 1920s and '30s, telling you what it was like back then.

They're apparently renovating Fisgard Lighthouse and have moved a few things into one of the previously locked rooms in the Casemate Barracks. Here's Hunter checking out the mock-up of the lighthouse that used to be inside the lighthouse. He was a bit miffed it was behind glass.

Possibly the best new exhibit, a mockup of authentic officer's quarters.

Hunter was being a little Shutterbug, I'll upload his pictures to his flickr account if anyone is curious.

Inside the underground weapons magazine, which is inside the Lower Battery

Couple shell pix

PULL THE LEVER!

The best room of all, Fortress Plotting Room

Down on the beach in front of Fisgard. Super windy!

H4!

View looking the other direction. If you continued left you would go to Fisgard, if you looked up and right you would see the Lower Battery

Just cuz

And that was our trip!

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:26:16 GMT

We received our LEGO® Brick Cake/Jelly Mould in the mail and finally tested it out this evening!

We were going to make a chocolate cake but I had no veggie oil (ack!) so we made lemon-poppyseed 'muffins' instead (thank God for some impulse buys).

Egg-white and water

Superbaker to the rescue!

Ready to go.

After 5-10 mins in the stove, lookin good!

All done! Almost ran out of batter for the ones on the right side. Not sure why they're lopsided though lol.

Proud Chef!

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 08:07:55 GMT

I finally sat down a couple weeks ago and started the project I've been putting off for more than two years.
I'm big on preservation of items and memories, but I don't really like standard photo albums. You go through all the trouble of printing pictures off, then stick them in a boring album, forget about them and have to remember years later what's going on in the pictures. Scrapbooking is the big option these days but it's vastly expensive and more crafty than I am.

Blurb's Booksmart program offers free software you download and create your own book through drag-and-drop. It's quite simple. Then you upload it to them, they print it off and send it to you and the books are absolutely beautiful. Hard cover (if you want it) with top quality glossy prints. You can add text as well so I love it because you can really tell a proper story about what's going on.

So I finally sat down and created a proper memory book for Hunter. It isn't entirely finished yet, I have to do the text work but here's a preview of a few pages...

That's only 5 of the 40 pages. I think I went with their 10x8 'Standard Landscape' book and for 20-40 pages it's only $30 for a hardcover.

I've actually got the basics for books for the first three years. It's funny how they start descending heavier and heavier into pictures (rather than text) as the years go on. ;-) We certainly got busy when he turned 2.5ish.

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 07:20:56 GMT

It was Bug Day 2009 today!

Which Hunter had been looking forward to for a few days now. We went last August, so it's been about a year.

I love the cocoons

Hello from Hunter & Snugglemonkey!

Inside the cage

The large brown one is the Goliath butterfly or somesuch, very cool.

Chillin....killin....

"Stop!"

Having a snack outside after Butterfly Gardens. It was 34 degrees up there!

Playing with his cool new Insect Morphs. You can take them apart and mix and match them. Very awesome.

We were moving a bit faster by this point and there were two large guided tours going on so picture taking wasn't exactly quality. And since I've already documented what most of the bugs are in our previous visit, I wasn't as anal retentive about taking pictures of every single sign either. Amusingly, it was apparently 'love in' time at both places as most of the bugs were having sex. ;-)

Look at the log in the back.

African Millipedes

This is the Goliath spider that was quite buried in it's web the last time we went so it was cool to see it clearly this time.

I call this the "Wall O' Death", as it contains various deathly poisonous/dangerous spiders like the Brown Recluse, a couple types of Widows, Huntsman, etc.

Flat Huntsman

Brazilian Pink Tarantula

Face off! Emporer Scorpion and a tarantula

The Mexican Red Knee tarantula. Held her again for about 3 minutes. If she's the same one as last year, she's certainly grown since then since it took both hands this time.

Checking out the Ant Wall.

I love this picture. You can actually see them carrying pieces of leaves up.

Checking out the Mexican Red-Knee again.

With his stamp and new tube of bugs

Sleepy boo...for about 20 seconds.

We watched Wall-E (again, I think if I have to watch that one more time, I'll start hiding it lol).

It was a good day. Butterfly Gardens charges a bit much for what you get, although I think it would help if we moved slower. It would be nice as a place to go and really take at least an hour to go through and maybe listen to one of the tours. We only tend to spend about 25 minutes there and it costs $30. Bug Zoo is a bit better since there's tours more often, you can hold most of the bugs (with the tour group), you can see them a lot better (since they're caged), more signs to read, etc. Only cost $22 for the three of us.

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:43:51 GMT

I just liked this quote from lil man tonight, rather prophetic sounding.

A more amusing conversation from this evening as well:

Me: *kisses Hunter* Hey goober.
Hunter: Um, actually I'm pookie pie.

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:31:44 GMT

We had my friend's wedding shower here the other weekend. I've been lazy in posting (does anyone even read this anymore?). Anyway, it was a lot of fun. It was one of the first parties we've really hosted in the house. Interesting but lots of work!!

Hunter and Layla playing Princess-of-the-Castle

Hunter provided everyone with a lot of amusement during the gift opening, by being right in there and yelling "WHAT IS IT?!?!?!" each time.

.I didn't notice the expression on his face until I resized it. Hah! A kid who doesn't like cake. Crazy!

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:10:52 GMT

Despite sleeping in, Hunter and I have had an uber productive day. We're hosting my friend's wedding shower here on the weekend and the house isn't party-ready at all. Hunter helped me clean and organize a lot of areas that have been irking. Tackled the downstairs bathroom, about four boxes of misc documents, upstairs entry closet and more. We also...

Mix master

Tray liner

Contemplations

Ready to go!

Sugar?

Yum

Into the stove (I know, our stove is dirty)

After five minutes..

And ten-ish...

"SSSsssss!" *point* Check the muffins!

Ready to decorate!

Tools of the trade. Incredibly cheap, irritating-to-squeeze icing! GO!

Work Work Work

Has to be just so

PERFECT!

Finito!

The Dread Pirate Blanc Beard

Muffcakes! Ok, that sounds horrible. Cupfins? Either way, not quite cupcakes, not quite muffins. But tasty and fun none-the-less. It's been fun for me to start baking, as it's a skill I always wanted to be good at but was too lazy to learn. So much really is just trial and error and even after a couple batches, I feel better about muffin-making. :-D

In other news, Hunter twitter! My life is too boring for one, but his isn't: http://twitter.com/hunterkl

I also uploaded his shutterbug photography to Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hunterk/

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:13:47 GMT

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:20:32 GMT

That's right, we're in!! I like this Gradual Entry program. Since it's not quite legible from the photo:

Sept 8th - Hunter checks in to school between 8:43 and 10:00 am. Will be directed to his new classroom and meet the teacher (we weren't told which teacher any of the kids would have at the orientation. Sadly, I know it won't be the one who taught Dan since she does the K/1 split.)

Sept 9th - Hunter has his first real day. It's not at the regular time (1:00 to 3:00), but it runs about the same amount of time (90 minutes). This 'trial run' goes from 10:40 to 12:00.

Nothing on Sept 10th, that's the morning classes trial run.

Sept 11th - The first official day of classes, at proper time (1:00 to 3:00).

School bus service begins on Friday as well. I still haven't decided if Hunter will take it or not. I have until Sept 8th to decide. We're well versed on public transit but I've always been there. I'd be there to load him on the bus to go to school, but no one would be there to get him back on the bus after school is over. I'm not sure how much supervision the kids are given to get on the bus or if they're essentially just let out of class and left to themselves to get to the 'loading zone.' They do have a number for questions so I suppose I'll inquire.

On a lighter note, Hunter and I just selected his backpack.

Pretty awesome. He chose it himself from Thomas, Wall-E, Lightning McQueen and various Batman backpacks. It's 8x10 with two compartments so it should be just about right for him.

Yesterday we took the Kindergarten Readiness Exam and Hunter scored 58 yesterday which puts him in "Congratulations! You are ready for Covenant Home's Kindergarten!" and 71 today which is "Begin now! Capitalize on your child's superior motivation and readiness." We'll test him again in a month or so and see how the progress goes.

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 05:02:55 GMT

Today was one of those days that parents all probably have where you sort of look at your child and realize how much they're 'not like the other kids.'

We took Hunter to Beckwith again, since the water has started up now and it was 24°. And in the midst of dozens of kids of all ages, all laughing and shrieking happily, we had a meltdown. Not just the whimpering kind, but a Tsar bomb level explosion. Tears, fists pounding and tearing out the grass, kicking, screaming and pretty well unable to be calmed. Even negotiating, threats and time-outs didn't get him into the water. So it was a wash (no pun intended) and we left after about 10 minutes.

Frustrations. Overall, not a huge deal, but frustrating none the less since we've been working on this apparent outside-water phobia for two years now. He's fine in the bath, he's fine in the shower, he's fine with his pool outside and even being sprayed by the garden hose. But a water park? Noooooo. Very odd and rather sucks since I imagine we're getting to the age now where many parties will be occurring at places like waterparks. He will not be the popular fellow sitting out on the sidelines.

Toilet training is going well, I feel. He's been 'urine trained' for like two years now, not an issue at all. But going #2 has gone through phases where he seesm fine and then phases where he regresses and for a few months now he's gone back to being inclined to go in his undwear, which has become completely frustrating for me to be constantly cleaning his poopy undies all day. He always has some excuse like "I was having too much fun" or "I was busy" and quickly brushes it off as "It was an accident" (when it wasn't, he does it purposely). All incredibly frustrating and with Kindergarten looming, needless to say this pretty well has to end.

I finally took the underwear and TV away and it seems to have helped but it's still quite frustrating.

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:08:47 GMT

Made the mistake of leaving the basement door open while we waited for the electrician to arrive. A giant death bee snuck in!

Hunter had some fun looking at it in the bug zoo at least. The thing is the Terminator of bees. I hit it twice and bounced it off two walls and it's still alive and kicking.

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:15:58 GMT

It was the Tea Party parade this morning! It was much better than last year and Hunter had more candy than on Halloween. It was like his ultimate dream; people throwing candy at him! ;-)

There's more parade pictures under the cut.

Hunter's favorite part, firetrucks!

Sidney the Kidney from the Kidney Foundation

The Lifejacket from the Red Cross

Unloading his candy haul into his chair

And from a couple days ago, we got in our order of MiniMates, which seem to be the lovechild of Playmobile and Lego. We went with DC Series 6, 7 and 8 and have quite the collection of figures now including Lobo, Batman, Nightwing, two Wonder Womans, Superman and more.

I've also been doing a lot of work on his room and it's looking mighty fine. Hardly a free wall left!

And last but not least, a few new ones of Hippolyta and her swanky new pad...

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 02:50:32 GMT

We had our first BBQ of 2009 with Uncle Damon. The hit was a Tent caterpillar named Frank. Hunter took Frank on quite a tour of Damon's yard. Poor (or maybe lucky) Frank ended up falling into a pile of grass but where there's one, there's apparently more because we seemed to find more to terrorize.

And in completely random OT news, Milvina Dean, the last Titanic survivor, apparently passed away. She was 97. RIP. The end of an era. Odd.

Sat, 30 May 2009 08:51:31 GMT

We got the pump working and it's been 21 to 23 degrees here for the past few days so the pool came out again. The entire Justice League joined in. It was quite the party. ;-P

Fri, 29 May 2009 22:59:11 GMT

Hunter and I have started the Your Baby Can Read program. I had eyed it months ago and then been put off by some rather negative comments. But I decided to go for it anyway. Hunter just finished the first disk with the comment "That was a fun baby game!" and "Aww, that is soooo cute." So I feel vindicated to say that it's successful so far.

We'll see how it goes in the next weeks and months. They're supposed to do the first disk (first 22 words) twice a day for about a month.

Wed, 27 May 2009 19:06:03 GMT

Went to Beckwith the other day. They've completely redone it since we went last year and it's quite uber now!

The water park hasn't changed and unfortunately we were a week early. But they overhauled the playground from some simple wood swings and climbers to that.

He wasn't sure about this chair

Boy in the bubble

H & J. "What did YOU find, Dada?!?"

Making friends with the Tent caterpillar Jason found

These were cool.

Excited to go back when the water starts, see if any of my work with the pool and garden hose has made him less wary.

Wed, 27 May 2009 18:29:07 GMT

We bought an awesome pool over the weekend and Hunter's been dieing to try it out but it's been raining and chilly for the past few days. The weather finally broke and we had a day of sun. I surprised him with his pool while he was having breakfast. I definitely should've waited until I had batteries for the electric pump because it took about 45 minutes to get all three pieces inflated wtih my little hand-pump. The yellow arch has around seven 'plugs' alone! Crazy. But fun. He got nice and wet which is always justification, since last year he would barely even put a toe in it after all that work. Mostly he liked terrorizing the bugs that would land on it.

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 11:24:19 GMT

A sizeable update since I haven't posted for a while.

Sadly Shayera (our second hamster) died on March 23rd. Not quite sure why but it was rather unexpected. Hunter handled it well though at one point he seemed sad and told me to 'never never tell me that she died' but then proclamed coolly a few minutes later that she died, alternating with that she went home to her mommy because she missed her mommy. I think I was more sad than he was. You'd think after doing it so many times (Shayera marked the seventh or so hamster I've seen pass on in my lifetime) it would get easier but it never does.

On a brighter note, the weather has been far better here lately, we're getting up to the 12s in the afternoons now so Hunter and I have taken advantage of it. We went and fed the ducks and went to the park the other day, which we had to ourselves for about 25 minutes. Very nice!

Iron Man and Iron Monger learned how to fly and use the slide.

We've also broken out the paints that Dan and Jenn got him a while back again and done some fingerpainting

I snapped a few nice pictuers of him last Wednesday or Thursday that I love:

And lastly, we attended Hunter's friend Preston's fourth birthday yesterday which was quite fun. It took him a few minutes to get motivated to join in but he had fun, mostly doing his own thing and breaking conformity. It now marks the end of the 'birthday season' (thankfully!).

It's now almost 5 am on Easter Sunday. I did a 7 pm run for Easter goodies that I'd procrastinated on getting and a midnight 'egg stuffing/basket making' party for one. We're ready to go on the morning egg hunt and then Hunter, Jason and I will be heading up island to visit Uncle Gerald, Val and Deeohgee.